


fantasias on a theme

by Figure_of_Dismay



Category: The Blacklist (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Ficlets, Prompt Fill, Red and Liz are not related, shot fic, this author does not acknowledge the retcon, unconnected shorts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-04
Updated: 2017-06-04
Packaged: 2018-11-08 17:58:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11086938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Figure_of_Dismay/pseuds/Figure_of_Dismay
Summary: an ongoing collection of lizzington short fics based on prompts. The ficlets are unconnected. these were posted on my tumblr originally, but I wanted to share them here as well. currently open for more prompts.





	1. sunshine

Prompt: lizzington, sunshine

**

S3B AU Lizzington mood piece

**

 

it was a coldly brilliant day their first morning at the Cottage, and Red had bundled up after coffee and gone out to walk in it. He’d wanted her to go along, but Liz felt slow and sleepy after travel, a timezone change, and another recent ordeal. She sat at the kitchen table with her mug and a tablet she ignored in favor of staring out the wide, foggy window at the waving sea grasses and the grey shore and grey sea gleaming in the sunlight. The kitchen and sitting area of the little cottage was dim and cave-like, the wood-paneled walls were darkened with age, but to Liz, it seemed not cramped but safe and protective, with the vista beyond the little house was wide and wild.

They were one the run, still, again. A partial pardon and a reassignment of blame had been enough to get her out of jail but not enough to make her feel like there was a point to sticking around DC. She had learned in those first weeks of striving to clear her name that the answers she sought and the change she wanted to affect to affect in the world weren’t found the DC swamp or under the auspices of the FBI, they dwelled perpetually within reach of Raymond Reddington’s hand, and that their rough-hewn, electric partnership was the vehicle she needed. They had spent one night at a DC safe house and in the morning she had told Red of her real gratitude for all he’d done to see her pardoned, and then of her dissatisfaction with the life waiting for her to step back into. He’d listened with quiet earnestness, and though he seemed to distrust her change of heart, he promised her that he would deny her nothing that he could safely give her, and that she would be as safe at his side, for as long as she wished to be there, as she ever could be directly under the Cabal’s watchful eye. They were on his jet once more before the afternoon was out, haring away from the law and into Red’s half-world once more.

She didn’t know how long she would stay at Red’s side, and knew he wondered as well, though they didn’t talk about the future. They didn’t talk about the distant past, either, a careful truce. The nature of their relationship had changed, living so closely stripped away many denials. She and Red had found a rhythm together, a peace, but mutual enjoyment of one another wasn’t a promise, and an agreement not to dwell on the terrible unknowns around them wasn’t the same as the truth and discovery she had pictured when turning her back on her life.

Still, sometimes there were beautiful mornings, in cozy beds, waking up beside Red with the sunlight on their skin, and his strong arms to keep her from feeling cold or lost or alone. Sometimes there were quiet boltholes in distant places, well stocked with every comfort. Always there was Red’s patience and eloquence and experience to lead her out of the dark when her fears or her nightmares or her baying anger took hold. Always there were strange wonders and startling juxtapositions to behold.

Once her coffee was finished, and the day had lost it’s early, glaring, insect-wing delicacy, she went out on the weathered deck beyond the kitchen door. She wanted to feel the warming sun and the sea air on her skin. She wanted to watch for Red’s dark coated figure as he ambled back towards home.


	2. splendor

Lizzington. Splendor/splendid.

**

Mid/Late/anywhere Fulcrum and Tom-free S2. 1,050 words

**

“How do I always end up as your fake date for these things,” Liz asked as she examined herself in front of the full length mirror, twisting to see herself in evening dress from one side and then the other. Then, “The light in here is terrible. I don’t think this is my color, but it’s almost impossible to tell.”

She’d gone to the Red’s safe house of the moment, an opulent town house whose owner had fled the country ahead of fraud charges and left it in Red’s care, in order to get ready for their evening. Her motel room was cramped and she and Red would need to arrive together, so she’d been happy to accept his offer. However, the high powered con man had had expensive, nouveau themed taste in decorating, favoring a lot of fussy little lamps on side tables over anything modern and efficient. It was a beautiful hideaway but it was a terrible place to get geared up for a night of soiree surveillance. In dark guest room, Liz couldn’t honestly see much difference in color between the black dress and the royal blue dress Red had provided for the occasion, but she’d never felt confident in blue. It made her look too pretty and demure.

“Nonsense,” said Red, looking up from fiddling with his cufflinks to peer at her with assessing sharpness, “You look lovely, Elizabeth. And I object to the term fake. You’re my plus one for the evening, we know each other at least as well as many of the couples we will mingle with tonight, and no money has even changed hands.”

Liz made a soft noise of disgust at his implication, and stepped away from the mirror, despairing. She hated formal wear. She hated glittering evenings small talk and smiling and keeping an ear out for the under the table deals Red worked at brokering or the approach of one of his contacts. Awkward, athletic, suburban girls didn’t go into the FBI because they were looking to get wined and dined, and as much as she enjoyed a good undercover sting, these evenings tended to veer between uncomfortable and boring.

“I don’t say that to be vulgar, Lizzy,” he said, holding up her coat to slip on and shuffling them towards the door, “The fact is that many of the sorts of men who will be attending the gala are the sort who find they need to buy the time of the lovely young women who appear on their arms. Many may have the looks, and most may have the wealth and power, but they don’t have the warmth or the personality to attract companionship. You, Lizzie, are far more real than any hired company.”

“We’re going there to spy on your friends and snag your contact once he leaves,” she reminded him, checking again to be sure her gun was tucked in her clutch, “Doesn’t that make this a fake date?”

Red hummed thoughtfully and shrugged. “I suppose. If you would prefer to see it that way. Everyone goes to these affairs with ulterior motives, and it hardly means we can’t have a good time between spying and the capturing and all that. I have it on good authority that Matteo Arrivabene is catering tonight, the food will be phenomenal.”

“Red,” she said, stopping abruptly and turning to eye him as he tried to gently guide her to the grand stair, “You didn’t finagle this whole thing just so that you could eat food from this chef guy you like, did you? Because if you did, we’re going to have some words about appropriate use of government resources.”

“Of course I didn’t set this up only because of Matteo, Lizzy. I’m not such a glutton as that. Call it instead a perk to make up for the miserable shoes and the tedious schmoozing that will make up our evening.”

“I’m surprised,” Liz admitted, allowing Red to give her his arm to lead her down the overly ostentatious and slippery curved staircase, “I thought you enjoyed these things. You’re the one who gets all the invites, after all.”

“Just because I can convincingly play the game does not mean that I enjoy the performance,” he told her, sounding regretful. “I would much rather take you out on a nice, quiet evening, just the two of us. Aurelius, and old painter friend of mine, is opening a beautiful show at his gallery for instance, and after that, Lilah’s for dinner, a nice, modern bistro but she manages to avoid the tacky gastro-pub blunders, and then I know a wonderful jazz club just a few blocks from there, and it’s a nice night for a stroll in just the right company…” he trailed off, smiling faintly at the image he’d created, and stared and nodded, drawn along, picturing with him. Liz could see it clearly, a private, artful evening to enrich body and mind, and of course Red would be at his most gracious and charming, murmuring anecdotes in her ear, drawing her out to speak about herself, resting his hand politely yet possessively on the small of her back in the way that he had when they were out together, as she grew progressively more aware of his nearness, aware of his warmth and hers. If he were any other man, it would the kind of fairytale first date where you could fall in love. 

“Alas, of course,” Red said briskly, breaking the spell, “we have other plans.”

She wanted to stamp her foot in frustration, she wanted to burst out at him that what he’d just done, dangling that image in front of her and then yanking it away again, was mightily unfair. But of course he wasn’t any other man, and they didn’t live in a fairytale, and she wasn’t supposed to want any of those things with him.

And, she realized, looking at read out of the corner of her eye as they approached the car, that he’d been completely honest, that truly was the evening he’d prefer, and yet he was going off with her to get bored silly in evening wear in order to help them bring down yet another criminal organization. There were times when she didn’t know what that said about either of them.


	3. Chapter 3

Lizzington + sweater dress (yes, I'm cheating lol)

**

winter of S2 AU where Tom had died in Berlin pt 2, and it kind of barely shows up in the ficlet, but like What Kind Of Day Has It Been, chasing Berlin is the whole ‘season’ bid bad plot. Established secret relationship Lizzington. 

**

The first Christmas after Sam’s death was hard, but she’s been so swept up in all the other new, strange and terrible things going on in her life that she hadn’t had time to dwell. The Holidays had come between the first time she suspected Tom and the second time, when she knew for sure, so in theory they should have done something to celebrate, something to reaffirm their commitment. But there had been a blacklister, a case that took them almost to the Canadian boarder, on the verge of leaving their jurisdiction before they caught the guy. Liz had ended up running through snowy woods and getting bruised in a tussle, and when she made it home on Christmas eve she’d gone bed and slept nearly through Christmas Day. Tom hadn’t even put up a fuss about her job interrupting their life. They hadn’t even put up a tree.

No, it was the next year, the next interminable stretch from November to the 25 of December, that was the most difficult, with enough time to think and remember to find it surreal. It was so uncomfortable, so different and irreconcilably changed that she wanted to set herself in firmly blinkered denial and forget all about the holidays and what they lacked, but even that was harder than it had been the year before. Tom was long gone and she’d sold the townhouse. Ostensibly she was still living in a series of motels, but ever since they’d begun their hunt for Berlin, she and Red had grown closer, and she stayed with him more often than not. They had to be careful, they had to be very, extraordinarily cautious so as not to draw attention to the change in the nature of their relationship, not from either side of the law, which didn’t exactly lend itself to happy nesting or holiday festivities.

Red could see that she was struggling though, and had gone out of his way to enliven her days with little outings and easy cases and little treats discretely delivered. It was flattering and disorienting. Liz had never been courted with such care and such encompassing attention to detail. Though she could see in Red’s face how deeply and selflessly he meant every gesture, she sometimes felt overwhelmed, found herself wondering if it was really fair that he expend so much so much of himself to please her, when she seldom had the time or the energy or the wherewithal to return the gestures. She appreciated it though, didn’t know how she could have made it thought those garish, festive, dreary weeks between halloween and Christmas without Red’s buffering influence.

Red had a way of being there for her, being there with her, without forcing her to talk about how she hurt or why. He didn’t ask her to become maudlin or reminisce about Sam or home or Christmases past. He let her guide the tone of their times together, whenever they could steal it. Sometimes there were evenings of wining and dining and gracious living, when she told Red she was looking to be charmed that night. Sometimes there were afternoons when they found the time to meet and argue about a case, and Red would be her sounding board while she ironed out a profile. Sometimes she sought him out in hunger, brimming with a need to feel good, to feel oblivious, to feel worshiped, and Red obliged with a fervor and thoroughness that was almost startling, every time.

Mostly though, there were quiet nights, so late that the rest of the city slept, sitting together and talking about books or music, or critiqued the late night movie on TV. Nights where they lay together in the dark, sometimes after hurried passion but most often after night ablutions that they had in recent months learned to do in tandem, and talked in near whispers about small worries or large wonderings. Always the same kinds of things, did Aram get you with the latest meme, do you think we should try and set Ressler up with someone, he looks especially dour lately. Aren’t you glad they never tried to re-chip you after Anslo. Do you think any of them suspect about us. Do you think Sam would have approved, given time. Do you wish I could give you a different life. Will it always be this way. But even so, with such vital topics easily passed between them in the dark, they never talked about his lost wife and child, or her birth parents, or the family they both wanted, the christmases with kids and presents and dogs and cookies and a big shiny tree — the impossible, cloying, wonderful mirage that must never be voiced.

She and Red didn’t celebrate any holidays together that first year they were together. Red’s moods were mercurial, sometimes buoyant and frivolous to the point where she could not keep pace, and sometimes muted, thoughtful. Always he watched her with such warmth, and with such concern. Liz tried to live day to day, not to think ahead, and not to think of what once was, and they managed.

But in the blank and somnolent gap between the 25th and the new year, she and Red did carve out a time to be together away from prying eyes. Liz had taken a few days off without telling Cooper more than that she needed a little time to decompress, and they’d gone away. She didn’t adapt to time zone changes nearly as well as Red did, so they’d gone north. Red had a cabin in the mountains of Maine, and though it was a bit of a hair-raising journey up from the air field in the snow, Liz was utterly charmed once they arrived.

It was like walking into a pretty illustration of a mountain cabin, timber built and sturdy with a stone hearth, and long, deep-silled windows letting in the view and glowing with white, snow-tinted sun as they stepped inside. It wasn’t large, not the kind of loge-like place she’d once stayed with a van-load of college friends to ski, but it was large enough to have rooms. It was large enough that she and Red could retreat from one another for a time if they needed some space, and yet not so big that they would feel like they were rattling around alone. Once the fire was lit and iron range started, and the electricity turned on, once Red had bustled and chatted and helped her unpack, and a fine afternoon snow began to fall, Liz felt as though they had their own private outpost agains the winter and the wild wood.

She helped Red prepare dinner, acting as sous chef and appreciative audience. Once the roast was in the oven and the load of groceries from the car put away, Red opened the snow-chilled champagne and they sat together on the sofa to watch the snow fall. Liz let him take her hand and guide her to sit across his lap. She used to avoid such poses, thinking it too girlish, too much like the limpet like clinging of an over-adoring wife. After Tom, she meant to face down intimacy only on her own terms. But Red was an exceptionally tactile man, he craved contact, her weight fully against him. She had come to see that Red didn’t see curling up together as subservience or neediness on her part, but simply as a way to be fully present with each other.

“You’re all fuzzy and soft,” he murmured, leaning over to rest his cheek on her shoulder briefly, rubbing his hands gently on her flank against her burgundy cashmere tunic.

“Hey,” she scolded, laughing, and reaching to set down her glass so as not to spill, “ticklish, remember? I’m not your cat, Red.”

“Of course,” he said, but smiled wickedly, innuendo in his eyes.

“Yeah, save that thought for later, okay? I’m too hungry to be sexy. That roast smells so good,” she said. She settled in more fully on the couch, legs across his thighs, and leaned agains his shoulder. Sometimes, the only times she felt right was burrowed into the crook of his arm, and she wanted to fold herself up and live in his breast pocket until all their troubles went away. Today had been good though, she felt bright and happy. “Anyway, I’m glad you like it. Samar invited me on a retail therapy day like two months ago, before things got so crazy. But then most of the things stayed in the bag because I started to worry I’d been too extravagant.”

“Well, you look beautiful, Lizzy. And I’d offer to take you to Europe for some real extravagance if I didn’t think you’d call me ridiculous and laugh it off.”

“I’m and FBI agent!” she protested, “If I start showing up too nicely dressed and rested, people will start to think something fishy’s going on.”

“Hmm. I concede to your most excellent but inconvenient logic, Lizzy,” he said, sounding faintly frustrated. “Actually,” Red continued in a cautious tone, “I must confess, despite what we agreed the other week, I did get you something. A new years gift, if you prefer. Or… Or an early anniversary present”

“Anniversary?” she asked, startled.

“Yes, Lizzy. It’s been five and a half months that we’ve been… Early in August, remember? That trip to New Orleans where we nearly suffocated in the humidity, that wonderful little bar we went to…”

“Oh, Red. You count from there?” she asked, mournful, wanting to squirm with embarrassment. “I treated you just awful after that. I didn’t think… Really? New Orleans? I think I don’t want you to remember that.”

“Sweetheart, that was a beautiful night. Our first discovery of each other. And in the moment you were a delight, so eager and alive. There were… difficulties later, yes. But I cherish that memory, Lizzy, and I hope someday you can, too.” He ran his fingers through her hair soothingly. “So where is it that you begin your count, when is it that you think our relationship began?”

“When you brought me home after the plague scare, a month later. And I stayed with you… And I realized somethings about us. I like that memory better because it comes without the humiliating running away part.”

“I wish you would stop feeling embarrassed about that. It was an instinctive reaction, and we got through it,” he said. “Just out of curiosity, though, what was it that changed your mind? Not just the plague scare, I think, yes? We came home to the safe house and you were withdrawn, suspicious of my motives, and then a day later… it was like the clouds had parted. As though you saw me differently.”

“Well, I did. I realized that when we were waiting for help, I’d told Samar that you were the bane of the existence, and it just wasn’t true. I realized that I was still thinking of you as disrupting my perfect little life with Tom, when that life was a complete fiction. I realized that I was projecting a lot of Tom baggage onto you, even though you’re his polar opposite. Also, and this part’s also a little shaming, I realized that it had been bugging me like crazy that you let Samar catch you, and that she’d been asking about you like she was interested. Even while we were basically dying, i might add. So I guess… I got a little jealous, and realized that if I didn’t shape up and do something about my feelings and make up for… after New Orleans, Samar was going to take her shot.”

“Samar is a thrilling, attractive woman, yes, but I value and have valued what we have together far too highly to jeopardize it. After I met you, Lizzy, I lost all interest in fleeting… preoccupations,” Red told her, in a low and heartfelt rumble, “But then, if a little jealousy pushed you into my arms, well…”

“Uh uh, don’t even joke,” she warned with a playful poke to his chest.

“So about this New Years or extremely early anniversary present, Lizzy… Will you allow me? Aren’t you curious?

“Yes, Red, I’m curious. I’m very, very curious. And I’ll tell you what else. Despite what we agreed, I got you something, too,” said Liz, and grinned.


End file.
